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In this episode of The Trust Moat, I sit down with Tomislav Car, founder of Productive, an all-in-one agency management platform and business software, to explore the shifting landscape of the software industry.
As AI democratizes coding and "moats" built purely on software begin to evaporate, we dive into what truly creates lasting value for the SaaS companies today. Tomislav shares his journey from bootstrapping a Productive agency to navigating the complexities of scaling teams and maintaining radical transparency in the era of agentic AI.
--- The Trust Moat Podcast explores why trust is the last durable competitive advantage—and the founders, investors, and builders who understand it. --
This episode was filmed at SaaStanak 2026, in Šibenik, Croatia - where SaaS meets sea and sand. More about it here https://saastanak.com/
What we cover: - The Bootstrapping Advantage: Why starting with a focus on productivity and financial freedom creates a resilient foundation.
- The AI Interface Shift: Moving from horizontal tools to vertical, agentic AI interfaces that solve specific problems.
- Future-Proofing Teams: How to overhaul headcount and internal structures to stay competitive as AI changes the workload.
- Trust Through Transparency: The role of radical honesty in building a team that can weather massive industry shifts.
- The "Founder Mode" Era: Lessons learned from the mobile boom and how to apply them to the current AI revolution.
Follow Tomislav on:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomislavcar/
🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1aLHebAw2S6DC3HLyEjuKQ
🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-trust-moat-podcast/id1895009648
🎧 Listen on Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/d02cd7a2-e32f-4480-8914-9a26d5c3d0ff
Connect with Maja on:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zmajapbaines
- X: https://x.com/lazarevic_p?s=11
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/majaperovicbaines_mbm
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The fashion industry is one of the world's most opaque industries, built on broken data and the assumption that no one would ever look too closely at where our clothes actually come from. In this episode, Maja sits down with Dóra Lality, co-founder and CLO of Material Exchange, to pull back the curtain on the global supply chain. Discover how technology and the upcoming EU Digital Product Passport are forcing a radical shift from "strategic ignorance" to total transparency, and why the future of fashion depends on being data-driven rather than just "creative."
--- The Trust Moat Podcast explores why trust is the last durable competitive advantage—and the founders, investors, and builders who understand it. ---
What we cover:
- The Myth of Sustainability: Why Dóra believes "sustainable material" doesn't actually exist and how to make better, less impactful choices.
- The Complexity of the Chain: Why a single garment often travels through seven different countries before reaching your wardrobe.
- The "Creative" Excuse: Overcoming the industry’s resistance to data and why being data-driven doesn't kill creativity.
- The Shift in Responsibility: How new legislation is moving the burden of compliance from manufacturers back to the brands.
- The 2027 Deadline: Everything you need to know about the mandatory EU Digital Product Passport and how it will change the way we shop.
- Building Trust through Data: How transparency creates a stronger relationship between suppliers, brands, and the next generation of consumers (Gen Z and Alpha).
- A Consumer’s Framework: Practical advice on how to choose brands you can actually trust beyond just the marketing labels.
Follow Dora on: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dóra-lality/
📹 Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/HCFpH27DrQo?si=CnasvOIAQx64ydVJ
🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1aLHebA...
🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
🎧 Listen on Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/d02...
Connect with Maja on:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zmajapbaines
- X: https://x.com/lazarevic_p?s=11
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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Alan Knott-Craig Jr. has published 10 books, built Africa's first mass-market social network, and invested in over 20 companies. But his most important venture might be his current one — bringing fast, affordable fiber internet to South Africa's townships for 25 cents a day. In this episode, Alan talks about what it actually takes to build in places the rest of the world has written off. Negotiating with construction mafias.
Losing everything and starting over. Choosing the right partners, focusing on the right business model, and purpose is the only thing that keeps you from giving up when the runway runs out.
--- The Trust Moat Podcast explores why trust is the last durable competitive advantage—and the founders, investors, and builders who understand it. --
What we cover:
- Why he came back to South Africa and never left
- How Fibertime works — and why 13 million homes were left behind
- Negotiating infrastructure deals in communities with no government and active gangs
- Losing everything after Mxit and rebuilding from scratch
- How to find the right business partners (and get rid of the wrong ones fast) - The ego dragon — why confidence is a superpower until it isn't
- How purpose makes the hardest decisions easy
Books Alan has written:
o Chasing the Internet, From Backyards to Boardrooms
o Life Lessons: How to Fail and Win o 13 Rules for Being an Entrepreneur
o Be a Hero: Live a Heroic Life
Follow Alan on: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanknottcraig
X - https://x.com/alanknottcraig
🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1aLHebAw2S6DC3HLyEjuKQ
🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-trust-moat-podcast/id1895009648
🎧 Listen on Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/d02cd7a2-e32f-4480-8914-9a26d5c3d0ff
Connect with Maja on: - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zmajapbaines - X: https://x.com/lazarevic_p?s=11
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/majaperovicbaines_mbm
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Gartner predicts that 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by 2027—not because the models aren't smart enough, but because the underlying memory layer isn't ready. In this episode, we sit down with Nemanja Bibic, Head of Growth at Cognee, a startup building the knowledge layer for our agentic future, to discuss the urgent need for a "hippocampus" for artificial intelligence. We dive deep into why current LLMs suffer from "AI Alzheimer’s," the technical difference between stateless and stateful versions, and why better memory—not just bigger models—is the key to reaching AGI. Inside the Episode
The "AI Alzheimer’s" Effect: Why current models struggle to retain context beyond 48 hours and act as a blank slate every time you open them. The $7.5M Infrastructure Bet: Why founders from OpenAI and Facebook AI Research are backing the development of a "cognitive infrastructure". Neurological vs. Cognitive Mimicry: How mimicking human reasoning and learning processes is moving AI accuracy from 60% toward 100%. The Economics of Memory: Why the next trillion-dollar companies will be the ones building the infrastructure that allows AI to learn, doubt itself, and function without constant human supervision. Community-Driven Intelligence: How 12,000 developers are building a persistent memory layer for the future of agentic workflows.Prefer watching the conversation? Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTrustMoatPod
⏱️ Chapters:
00:00:00 Intro
00:03:40 CHAPTER 1 - WHY YOUR AI HAS AMNESIA
00:05:15 The "48-Hour Wipe": Why LLMs lose context over time
00:08:30 Stateless vs. Stateful: The technical root of AI memory loss 00:14:22 Why "Long Context Windows" aren't a permanent fix
00:25:42 CHAPTER 2 - THE $7.5M BET ON A PROBLEM NOBODY'S TALKING ABOUT
00:27:10 Why OpenAI and FAIR founders are backing memory infrastructure 00:29:45 Identifying the "infrastructure gap" in the current AI stack 00:32:15 The business risk of building on "forgetful" models
00:34:47 CHAPTER 3 - WHAT "AI MEMORY" ACTUALLY MEANS
00:36:12 Vector Databases vs. Knowledge Graphs: A breakdown
00:38:50 The role of "Ontologies" in making AI understand your business 00:40:05 Ephemeral vs. Persistent memory in agentic workflows
00:42:08 CHAPTER 4 - HOW THE HUMAN BRAIN INSPIRED A FIX FOR BROKEN AI MEMORY
00:44:10 Mimicking the Hippocampus: Building a digital long-term memory 00:46:55 How "Cognitive Mimicry" beats simple "Neurological Mimicry" 00:49:30 The "Self-Doubt" Mechanism: Teaching AI to know what it doesn't know
00:52:48 CHAPTER 5 - 12,000 DEVELOPERS WHO CHOSE TO BUILD THIS FOR FREE
00:54:20 The Open Source advantage in AI security and memory
00:58:15 Why community-driven "Maltbots" are outpacing corporate labs 01:03:40 Collaborative Intelligence: Lessons from 12k contributors
01:07:54 CHAPTER 6 - THE RACE BENEATH THE RACE: MEMORY VS MODELS
01:09:15 Commodity Models: Why intelligence is becoming a "race to zero" 01:11:05 Proprietary Data + Memory: The only defensible moat left
01:13:39 CHAPTER 7 - WHAT YOUR COMPANY SHOULD DO BEFORE LOCKING IN AN AI STACK
01:15:20 The Gartner Warning: Avoiding the 40% project failure rate 01:18:45 Evaluating your "Memory Layer" before you buy the model
01:21:10 Future-proofing your agentic infrastructure
Follow Nemanja Bibic on :
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nemanja-bibic-20523b87/ Check out Cognee: https://www.cognee.ai/Connect with Maja on:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zmajapbaines/X: https://x.com/lazarevic_p?s=11Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/majaperovicbaines_mbm -
Get this straight in your inbox --> 📩 Subscribe to the Trust Moat newsletter: https://majapbaines.substack.com/
AI agent security is the silent threat behind every startup using Claude, ChatGPT, Cloud Code, or autonomous agents in 2026 — and most founders don't know what the "lethal trifecta" is or why it increases their risks of leaking their entire customer database.
In this episode, head of security consultant for startups, Guillaume Ross, breaks down the real-world security risks of agentic AI, prompt injection attacks, and the identity problem of AI agents acting on your behalf. From Cloud Code on a marketing team's laptop to customer service chatbots leaking data, Guillaume shares almost two decades of cybersecurity experience securing startups, fintechs, and regulated banks — and explains what every founder, developer, and everyday Claude user should be doing TODAY to stay safe.
THE GUEST
Guillaume Ross is a startup CISO and security consultant based in Montreal, who has built security infrastructure from scratch at companies ranging from pre-revenue startups to regulated financial institutions, crypto companies, and banks. Previously Head of Security at Jupiter One.
Connect with Guillaume on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaumeross
Check out his website on security: https://foundersfirewall.io
🔥 What you'll learn:
- Why "shadow AI" is the new shadow IT — and how to stop it
- The lethal trifecta: private data + untrusted input + internet access = disaster
- Why BYOD laptops are a security nightmare for AI-first startups
- How prompt injection actually works (with a real email example)
- The AI agent identity problem nobody is talking about
- Why customer service chatbots are the #1 attack surface in 2026
- Sandboxing OpenClaw, Cloud Code, and computer-use agents safely
- Vibe coding security: what to never roll yourself
- MCP servers: the hidden risk in your AI stack
- What governments get WRONG about LLMs (the August 2025 CISA incident)
- AI-assisted vulnerability scanning vs. AI-generated code risks
⏱️ Chapters:
00:00:00 Intro
00:04:52 CHAPTER 1: EVERYONE IS A DEVELOPER NOW
00:05:23 The expansion of the corporate attack surface
00:07:38 Why startups selling to enterprise need security on Day 1
00:08:35 The problem with "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD)
00:09:42 Choosing tech that is "easy to manage."
00:10:49 CHAPTER 2: SHADOW AI IS THE NEW SHADOW IT
00:11:43 Lessons from the CISA document leak
00:12:02 The Dropbox era vs. the AI era
00:12:47 Why blocking AI tools usually fails
00:13:44 How to force corporate versions of ChatGPT and Claude
00:14:24 Why personal accounts bypass legal data protections
00:22:32 CHAPTER 3 - THE AGENT IS YOU
00:26:39 Security risks of browser-based AI agents
00:27:14 Why you shouldn't use agents in your primary browser profile
00:32:47 The consolidation of the AI startup market
00:33:41 Transparency: Identifying agents vs. humans
00:34:00 The difficulty of detecting synthetic voice and deepfakes
00:47:53 CHAPTER 4 - THE LETHAL TRIFECTA
00:48:05 Why text-based LLMs can't separate instructions from data
00:48:30 Indirect prompt injection: The "hidden email" threat
00:49:35 How attackers can exfiltrate quarterly reports via AI
00:52:20 The danger of agents with "Write" access
00:53:15 Sandboxing "OpenClaw" and computer-use models
00:59:01 CHAPTER 5 - WE DON'T HAVE A FIX FOR THIS YET
01:00:15 Why basic threat modeling is essential for builders
01:02:30 Dealing with "close calls" in AI automation
01:05:40 The "Identity Crisis" of agentic authentication
01:10:12 Future predictions for AI native security products
01:15:50 Resources for builders: foundersfirewall.io
🔗 Resources mentioned:
→ Founders Firewall (Guillaume's free security guide for startup founders): https://foundersfirewall.io
→ Simon Willison on the lethal trifecta: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/16/the-lethal-trifecta/
→ OWASP LLM Top 10: https://owasp.org/www-project-top-10-for-large-language-model-applications/
If you're building a startup, shipping AI features, or just using Claude and ChatGPT every day, this conversation will change how you think about security forever.
Prefer to watch on Youtube --> https://youtu.be/-p139v8fAgw?si=FQzJxRmVNcP5gGKA
Connect with Maja on:
- LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/zmajapbaines
- X https://x.com/lazarevic_p?s=11
- Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/majaperovicbaines_mbm
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Talking about community as a moat, capital, and the long game - with the investor who spent 20 years earning the right to write checks. Tihomir Bajic has seen what makes companies last. Most founders are solving the wrong problem. In this episode, we get into why community isn't a marketing tactic — it's a moat. Why trust compounds slower than revenue but outlasts it. And what it actually looks like to build something designed to survive the long game. If you're building a company and playing for keeps, this one's for you.
Follow Monkey Business Media on:
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel
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Where to find Tihomir Bajić
Connect with Tiho on LinkedIn
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